... The latest safe mode was triggered by a failure to dump momentum from TESS's reaction wheels, which requires using the spacecraft's propulsion system. The system had not been successfully repressurized following the earlier safe mode event on April 8.

Once the issue was corrected, TESS resumed science operations. However, the team still needs to figure out what caused the April 8 upset...

... TESS was launched in 2018 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and is currently in its second mission extension. As of April 18, the observatory had discovered 432 planets and 7,138 planet candidates...

A Chinese citizen journalist who has been in prison for four years after reporting on the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic in Wuhan is due to be released on Monday...

... Her weight reportedly dropped from 11st 8lb (74.8kg) to less than 6st 4lb (40.8kg) at one point, although she is thought to have been in better health in recent months.

Zhang’s former lawyer said that her case was treated “particularly harshly”...

... “It’s a relief to know that Zhang is being released, given her very poor health in prison, but she shouldn’t have been imprisoned in the first place. Her imprisonment should remind us all that the Chinese government is yet to be held accountable for covering up the Covid-19 outbreak, or for the abuses associated with its draconian pandemic restrictions.”

Wang said that there were fears that Zhang would not fully regain her freedom after release.

Zhang’s former lawyer said that there were likely two outcomes after her release. The first is that she will be sent home. “The other is that she will be sent somewhere to have ‘soft prison’ time for one to three months … based on my experience of dealing with so-called sensitive people, there will be a period of time where they are not allowed contact with the outside world, not allowed to move somewhere.”...

... Russia launched the armoured incursion early on Friday, an attack that may presage a broader push into the Kharkiv region or aim to draw away overstretched Ukrainian forces in the east...

... taking advantage of Ukraine’s shortages of troops and artillery shells...

... Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, urged Kyiv’s western allies to speed up the supply of promised weapons.

He said: “It is important that partners support our soldiers and Ukrainian stability with timely supplies. Really timely. The package that really helps is the weapons brought to Ukraine, not just the ones announced.”

Trust builds passes under road bisecting Berkshire commons...

... How did the adder cross the road? It didn’t – it was too scared.

Now, however, road-shy populations of the increasingly endangered snake are being given a helping hand with the construction of Britain’s first adder tunnels.

The two tunnels, which run beneath a road bisecting Greenham and Crookham Commons in Berkshire, have been designed to appeal to the heat-seeking reptiles...

NFU’s director of strategy asked for review ['removal'] of EU-derived protections as part of post-Brexit loosening of rules...

... high temperature heat pump which they believe could be the solution for 80% of UK homes and could cost just £500!

01:16 Supermarkets Charge more!
03.39 Energy blockage
06:10 Super Efficient Solar
07:45 Tesla Autonomous Taxis
10:14 It’s the end for oil
13:23 Volta Trucks are BACK!
14:27 Battery News
16:10 EVs by the sh** load
17:14 Is 1000km range enough?
20:04 Hyundai US sales skyrocket!

You are only allowed a hyphen, which means ONE hyphen, and that statement contains two.

Lawyers!

... A report on the global power system has found that the world may be on the brink of driving down fossil fuel generation, even as overall demand for electricity continues to rise.

Clean electricity has already helped to slow the growth in fossil fuels by almost two-thirds in the past 10 years...

... “The decline of power sector emissions is now inevitable,”...

... Although fossil fuel use in the world’s electricity system may begin to fall, it continues to play an outsized role in global energy – in transport fuels, heavy industry and heating. A separate study by the Energy Institute found last year that fossil fuels including oil, gas and coal made up 82% of the world’s primary energy...

Exclusive: Planet is headed for at least 2.5C of heating with disastrous results for humanity, poll of hundreds of scientists finds

Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above preindustrial levels this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet...

Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit would be met.

Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and [climate forced] mass migration...

They are terrified, but determined to keep fighting...

“Sometimes it is almost impossible not to feel hopeless and broken,” ... “We keep doing it because we have to do it, so [the powerful] cannot say that they didn’t know. We know what we’re talking about. They can say they don’t care, but they can’t say they didn’t know.”...

... The task climate researchers have dedicated themselves to is to paint a picture of the possible worlds ahead. From experts in the atmosphere and oceans, energy and agriculture, economics and politics, the mood of almost all those the Guardian heard from was grim. And the future many painted was harrowing: famines, mass migration, conflict. “I find it infuriating, distressing, overwhelming,” said one expert, who chose not to be named. “I’m relieved that I do not have children, knowing what the future holds,”...

... So how do the scientists cope with their work being ignored for decades, and living in a world their findings indicate is on a “highway to hell”?...

... “The big difference [with the most recent IPCC report] was that all of the scientists I worked with were incredibly frustrated. Everyone was at the end of their rope, asking: what the fuck do we have to do to get through to people how bad this really is?”

“Scientists are human: we are also people living on this Earth, who are also experiencing the impacts of climate change, who also have children, and who also have worries about the future,” said Schipper. “We did our science, we put this really good report together and – wow – it really didn’t make a difference on the policy. It’s very difficult to see that, every time.”

Climate change is our “unescapable reality”...

... In the climate crisis, even fractions of a degree do matter: every extra tenth means 140 million more people suffering in dangerous heat...

... The climate emergency is already here...

... In the face of such colossal danger, why is the world’s response so slow and inadequate? The IPCC experts overwhelmingly pointed to one barrier: lack of political will ... also blaming vested corporate interests...

... And could PooTin be so stupid?

Russia Ready To Launch Offensive on NATO Country, Poland Warns.

Boeing's long-delayed Starliner crewed launch, which was scheduled for today, has been postponed yet again, this time due to a valve problem on the Centaur upper stage. Managers pushed back the next attempt to no earlier than May 10.

It is the closest Boeing has come to launching a crew in the Starliner capsule. The countdown was approaching the two-hour mark before the scrub call came in as managers worried about "anomalous behavior by the pressure regulation valve in the liquid oxygen tank of the Centaur upper stage of the ULA Atlas V launch vehicle," according to Boeing...

... Sunita "Suni" Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore, had boarded the spacecraft before the scrub was called. This launch was set to be the 100th flight of the Atlas V rocket, and notably the first carrying humans...

... It has taken nearly ten years for Boeing to reach this point. In 2014, it was awarded $4.2 billion and SpaceX $2.6 billion as NASA sought to reduce its reliance on Russia and launch its astronauts from US soil on American spacecraft. The goal was to end dependency on Russia by 2017...

Ethereal scenes of flowing super-heated material may help explain why atmosphere is hotter than surface...

... On the horizon, spires of gas, known as spicules, reach up from the sun’s chromosphere to heights of about 6,000 miles (10,000km).

In the centre of the field of view, a small eruption is visible, with cooler material being lifted upwards before mostly falling back down. Although small relative to the largest events, this eruption is still larger than Earth.

The footage also reveals coronal rain, which at less than 10,000C looks dark against the bright background of large coronal loops (about 1,000,000C)...

... The $1.3bn (£1bn) mission was launched in 2020 and next year will begin to climb out of the planetary plane to provide the first glimpses of the sun’s uncharted north and south poles.

Exclusive: decision to grant licences condemned by critics as a stunt that shows Tories are ‘playing politics with climate’

Fossil fuel companies will be allowed to explore for oil and gas under offshore wind-power sites for the first time, the government will announce on Friday, in a move that campaigners said is further proof that ministers are abandoning the climate agenda...

... The move has brought renewed criticism of Rishi Sunak from environmentalists, including from the prime minister’s own former net zero tsar, who worry that any future oil and gas production could hamper clean energy generation...

... “With a general election just months away, this is a deeply irresponsible and divisive move that goes against all advice from the International Energy Agency or the UN, and regrettably will further set back the UK’s climate reputation.

“Instead of wind powering new oil, the investment should instead be in more wind and renewables. More fossil fuels will only create stranded assets and stranded jobs at a time when demand for oil and gas is falling.”...

... Friday’s announcement is likely to undermine investor confidence in Britain’s green energy sector as a whole. The Guardian understands that investors in offshore wind have already expressed concern to the government about the decision, even threatening to pull out of the UK clean power sector altogether...

[Instead of more oil and gas:] ... the trade body RenewableUK, said: “Prioritising offshore wind over oil and gas isn’t just the right choice for the planet, but given renewables are the lowest-cost means of generating power, we should be doing this for bill payers.”...

The government has been defeated in court - for a second time - for not doing enough to meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmental campaigners argued that the energy minister signed off the government's climate plan without evidence it could be achieved.

The High Court ruled on Friday that the government will now be required to redraft the plan again.

In response the government defended its record on climate action...

Here's hoping that all the significant projects have been using MFA to stay safe from that attack...

Not a panacea https://www.pingidentity.com/en/resources/blog/post/how-attackers-are-circumventing-mfa-and-how-stop-them.html

Security is what we allow.

... researchers have formally shown that exposure to toxic PFAS increases the likelihood of death by cardiovascular disease, adding a new level of concern to the controversial chemicals' wide use...

... Records further showed an increased likelihood of death from several cancers, but stopped short of establishing a formal association because of other factors...

... drinking water was widely contaminated by a PFAS-production plant between 1985 and 2018. Researchers first found an excess of about 4,000 deaths during this period, or about one [person] every three days...

... the findings underscore the need to ban PFAS, and the disaster's injustice.

Inject signed malware on any project.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/0-click-gitlab-hijacking-flaw-under-active-exploit-with-thousands-still-unpatched/

Security is what we allow.

... data showed that thousands of users had yet to install a patch released in January [2024].

[To fix/correct] A change GitLab implemented in May 2023...

... the code word Hamas, but it is identical to Palestinian. Just like Israeli is identical to Jew.

Microsoft didn't disclose the in-the-wild exploits by Kremlin-backed group...

Kremlin-backed hackers have been exploiting a critical Microsoft vulnerability for four years in attacks that targeted a vast array of organizations with a previously undocumented tool, the software maker disclosed Monday.

When Microsoft patched the vulnerability in October 2022—at least two years after it came under attack by the Russian hackers—the company made no mention that it was under active exploitation. As of publication, the company’s advisory still made no mention of the in-the-wild targeting...

Engineers have partially restored a 1970s-era computer on NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft after five months of long-distance troubleshooting, building confidence that humanity's first interstellar probe can eventually resume normal operations.

Several dozen scientists and engineers gathered Saturday in a conference room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or connected virtually, to wait for a new signal from Voyager 1. The ground team sent a command up to Voyager 1 on Thursday to recode part of the memory of the spacecraft's Flight Data Subsystem (FDS), one of the probe's three computers.

“In the minutes leading up to when we were going to see a signal, you could have heard a pin drop..."

... a manager by trade -- is an example of everything wrong with the tech industry...

... a hall-of-fame rot economist, and one of the many managerial types that have caused immeasurable damage to the Internet in the name of growth and "shareholder value." And I believe these uber-managers - these ultra-pencil-pushers and growth-hounds - are the forces destroying tech's ability to innovate.

With little competition at the goverment level, Windows giant has no incentive to make its systems safer

Microsoft has a shocking level of control over IT within the US federal government – so much so that former senior White House cyber policy director AJ Grotto thinks it's fair to call Redmond's recent security failures a national security issue...

... Microsoft had to be "dragged kicking and screaming" to provide [system] logging capabilities to the government by default, and given the fact the mega-corp banked around $20 billion in revenue from security services last year, the concession was minimal at best...

... which allowed spies to gain access to US government emails...

... "The government needs to focus on encouraging and catalyzing competition," Grotto said. He believes it also needs to publicly scrutinize Microsoft and make sure everyone knows when it messes up...

Is this story allowed, considering the thread's title. LOL

There is, it seems, an epidemic of illness among the working-age population.

This week the Office for National Statistics once again warned about the number of people being driven out of the jobs market because of ill-health...

... [And] there are as many people aged 16 to 64 in work whose health limits what they can do as they are out of work because of ill-health...

... "The 2008 financial crisis had a major impact on society - we saw an economic downturn and public spending cuts. That had an impact on people's health in many different ways. The pandemic and subsequent cost of living crisis exacerbated trends, but the signs were there before Covid hit.

"Access to health care has become more difficult, while those fundamental building blocks of health - such as good housing and adequate incomes - are under strain."

How that has affected people varies depending on their age and where they live. Research published this week warned the numbers with major illness was set to increase significantly. with the people in the most deprived areas suffering the most...

... significant burden of ill-health: chronic pain, type 2 diabetes and mental health problems...

... the situation has been made worse by the increasing difficulty people face getting treatment ... The hospital waiting list has been rising pretty consistently for the past decade as spending on the health service has been squeezed...

... our diets and increasingly sedentary lifestyles...

... "You need a healthy workforce if you want a healthy economy,"...

Tenants of the high-rise in New Rochelle, New York, want to abandon the name which has at times [adversely] affected real estate value...

The American Diabetes Association takes millions from companies that stand to profit from our reliance on drugs. Is that affecting their guidance?

For a glimpse into how big business influences the $4tn US healthcare system, look no further than the world’s most powerful diabetes advocacy and research non-profit, the American Diabetes Association (ADA).

Diabetes afflicts 38 million Americans, with another 90 million considered pre-diabetic. Every year the disease claims the lives of over 100,000 Americans and disproportionately affects people of color. It is also ruinously expensive, as doctors visits, hospital stays, insulin, blood test strips, leg amputations, continuous glucose monitors and numerous glucose-lowering drugs add up to about $400bn a year. To put it bluntly, we are losing the war on diabetes.

And unlike many other diseases – such as certain cancers, Alzheimer’s, kidney disease, or Crohn’s – type 2 diabetes is reversible.

This bears repeating and elaboration. Numerous nutritional studies have shown that diabetes can be reversed...

... in 2021, the Patients for Affordable Drugs report, found that a third “of the members of the ADA board of directors have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry”.

Diabetes is a national scandal hiding in plain sight. Despite infinite medical innovations, including glucose-lowering drugs, fast- and slow-acting insulin, A1C tests, continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps, more than 100,000 Americans die from the condition annually. In 1980, before many of these medical breakthroughs were available, that number was 35,000.

The big winners of the ADA’s cozy arrangements with industry, of course, are the pharmaceutical companies that enjoyed an estimated $58bn in annual sales in 2017, and the medical device and food companies who donate to the ADA in exchange for recipe endorsements.

The losers are the millions of people with diabetes who suffer amputations, blindness, neuropathy, often daily shoot themselves with insulin and eat carbohydrate-rich foods because they simply are not informed about their healthier options...

When it comes to healthy eating, fruits and vegetables reign supreme. But along with all their vitamins, minerals and other nutrients can come something else: an unhealthy dose of dangerous pesticides.

Though using chemicals to control bugs, fungi and weeds helps farmers grow the food we need, it’s been clear since at least the 1960s that some chemicals also carry unacceptable health risks. And although certain notorious pesticides, such as DDT, have been banned in the US, government regulators have been slow to act on others...

Quite a chill sting for each hailstone pinging off yer nose and cheeks

Those aren't as bad as the one the shoots into yer ear 'ole.....

Ouch again
https://thehackernews.com/2024/04/widely-used-putty-ssh-client-found.html

Security is what we allow.

... it has been resolved by switching to the RFC 6979 technique for all DSA and ECDSA key types, abandoning its earlier method of deriving the nonce using a deterministic approach that, while avoiding the need for a source of high-quality randomness, was susceptible to biased nonces when using P-521.

This older approach, PuTTY developers said, was devised at a time when Microsoft Windows lacked native support for a cryptographic random number generator...

... “The quality of the IBR Boeing conducted was so poor that Virgin Galactic and Boeing agreed that Boeing was required to redo the review,” the complaint states. The second IBR was even worse, Virgin said, providing less than half of the required deliverables...

Michael Mosley discovers that enjoying more olive oil in your daily diet can come with a whole host of surprising benefits, including protecting your brain, improving your memory and reducing chronic inflammation...

1: Marketing pressure?

2: Cultural pressure??

3: Old habits and only partial flexibility?

4: Mentality??

Enjoy eating and living healthy!
Martin

Fake meat can cause real health risks — experts call for caution amid plant-based craze

Research published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared the impacts of protein alternatives, scientifically known as plant-based meat analogues, or PBMAs, to actual meat dishes — and the experts didn’t necessarily like what they found.

... effects on health is warranted in an Asian population ... on cardiometabolic health among adults with elevated risk of diabetes in Singapore...

"A plant-based meat analogues diet did not show widespread cardiometabolic health benefits compared with omnivorous diets over 8 weeks".

... Interviews with more than two dozen current and former employees reveal longstanding concerns about quality, particularly as pressure increased to keep production going in the company’s factories.

Now, Boeing faces an immense challenge as it seeks to make changes that improve the quality of its products and regain its credibility...

... Quality issues date back years...

... The company has lost thousands of experienced workers...

... A six-week F.A.A. audit of Boeing’s 737 Max production documented dozens of lapses in quality-control practices...

... The company also said that since Jan. 5, employees had asked for more training and that it was working on meeting those needs...

... And on Monday, Boeing announced sweeping changes to its leadership...

... Boeing has achieved the unthinkable this week: It managed to fall even deeper into crisis.

Adding to an already miserable start to 2024, Boeing stood accused Tuesday of routinely ignoring a whistleblower’s complaints about the allegedly critically flawed manufacturing process...

Rishi Sunak ordered multiple taxpayer-funded focus groups and polls to craft the messaging of his planned “eat out to help out” campaign in July 2020, despite keeping the UK’s top medical and scientific advisers in the dark about the scheme.

The Treasury negotiated five public opinion contracts worth more than £2m from June 2020 throughout the pandemic, while Sunak was chancellor, including those to establish how best to “sell” the hospitality scheme to voters...

... Sunak has denied that the £850m policy – which gave diners a state-funded £10 discount – drove a second wave of Covid infections, despite research showing it caused a rise of between 8% and 17%, while the economic benefits of the scheme were short-lived.

The Covid inquiry has heard that senior scientific advisers were not consulted ... leading some in government to privately refer to him as “Dr Death” and the Treasury as the “pro-death squad”...

... “That [recently released material] proves what we have always feared – Rishi Sunak cared passionately about how [the “eat out to help out” campaign] introduction would affect his own political standing, but [he] could not have cared less what it would do to Covid infection rates.”...

Intel CPU cores remain vulnerable to Spectre data-leaking attacks...

... mitigations put in place at the software and silicon level by the x86 giant to thwart Spectre-style exploitation of its processors' speculative execution can be bypassed, allowing malware or rogue users on a vulnerable machine to steal sensitive information – such as passwords and keys...

... AMD and Arm cores are not vulnerable to Native BHI, according to the VU Amsterdam team. AMD has since confirmed this in an advisory...

... Spectre emerged in public in early 2018, along the related Meltdown design blunder, which The Register first reported. Over the years various variants of Spectre have been found, prompting engineers to shore up the security...

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it has finalized rules for handling water supplies that are contaminated by a large family of chemicals collectively termed PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances). Commonly called "forever chemicals," these contaminants have been linked to a huge range of health issues, including cancers, heart disease, immune dysfunction, and developmental disorders.

The final rules keep one striking aspect of the initial proposal intact: a goal of completely eliminating exposure to two members of the PFAS family. The new rules require all drinking water suppliers to monitor for the chemicals' presence, and the EPA estimates that as many as 10 percent of them may need to take action to remove them. While that will be costly, the health benefits are expected to exceed those costs...

... Or is this attack vector something that is a design fault in the model of FOSS and Github?

... compression/decompression algorithms widely used in Unix-based systems, including Linux systems. XZ Utils is used by many operations...

... The backdoor enabled an attacker to execute remote code via an SSH login certificate. Only XZ Utils versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 are impacted...

... Freund explained that the discovery of the backdoor in XZ was luck, as it “really required a lot of coincidences.”

... implementation of the backdoor has been a very quiet process that took about two years. In 2021, a developer named Jian Tan, username JiaT75, appeared out of the blue...

... In the months that followed, Tan became increasingly involved in XZ Utils and became co-maintainer of the project. In February 2024, Tan issued commits for versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 of XZ Utils, both of which contained the backdoor...

... Finally, several persons responsible for different Linux distributions have been contacted by the attacker to include the backdoored versions of XZ Utils in their own distributions. ... “Very annoying – the apparent author of the backdoor was in communication with me over several weeks trying to get xz 5.6.x added to Fedora 40 & 41 because of it’s ‘great new features’. We even worked with him to fix the valgrind issue (which it turns out now was caused by the backdoor he had added)...

... In addition to the highly elaborated social engineering covered previously in this article, the backdoor itself is very complex...

... [VERY sophisticated] “someone put a lot of effort for this to be pretty innocent looking and decently hidden. From binary test files used to store payload, to file carving, substitution ciphers, and an RC4 variant implemented in AWK all done with just standard command line tools. And all this in 3 stages of execution, and with an ‘extension’ system to future-proof things and not have to change the binary test files again.”...

... “this appears to be a meticulously planned, multi-year attack, possibly backed by a state actor. Considering the massive efforts invested and the low prevalence of vulnerable systems we’re seeing, the threat actors responsible must be extremely unhappy right now that their new weapon was discovered before it could be widely deployed.”...

... Thanks to Freund’s discovery, the attack was stopped before being spread on a wider scale...

... While xz is commonly present in most Linux distributions, the backdoor only targeted Debian- and RPM-based systems running on the x86-64 architecture...

... The backdoor gives an attacker who possesses a specific Ed448 private key remote code execution capabilities on the affected Linux systems. The issue has been assigned a CVSS score of 10.0, the highest possible score...

... Freund noticed that SSH connections were generating an unexpectedly high amount of CPU usage as well as causing errors in Valgrind,[7] a memory debugging tool...

... the campaign to insert the backdoor into the XZ Utils project was a culmination of approximately three years of effort by a user going by the name Jia Tan and the nickname JiaT75 to gain access to a position of trust within the project...

... Some of the suspected sock puppetry characters are Jigar Kumar, krygorin4545, and misoeater91. It is suspected that the names Jia Tan, as well as the supposed code author Hans Jensen (for versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1) are simply pseudonyms invented by participants of the campaign...

... The backdoor was notable for its level of sophistication and for the fact that the perpetrator practiced a high level of operational security for a long period of time while working to attain a position of trust. American security researcher Dave Aitel has suggested that it fits the pattern attributable to APT29, an advanced persistent threat actor believed to be working on behalf of the Russian SVR. Others[who?] have suggested that it could be any state actor or a non-state actor of considerable resources...

... "this could have been the most widespread and effective backdoor ever planted in any software product", noting that had the backdoor remained undetected, it would have "given its creators a master key to any of the hundreds of millions of computers around the world that run SSH".[24] In addition, the incident also started a discussion regarding the viability of having critical pieces of cyberinfrastructure depend on unpaid volunteers.

... new executive leaders "treated experienced engineers and machinists as expendable, ignoring the potential damage to Boeing's essential mission of designing and building high-quality airplanes...."...

... "Crush the workers. Share price. Share price. Share price. Financial moves and metrics come first,"...

... "For years, we prioritized the movement of the airplane through the factory over getting it done right..."...

... "Engineers who raised technical doubts were told: 'Follow the plan. If you can't do your job, I'll fire you and get someone who can.'"

I'm sure this will be blamed on Boeing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBQkk4RcidA

It's now being reported in the media.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68758088

"... after it ripped off, the engine cowling "struck the 737-800's wing flap."...

Summer 2023 intrusion pinned to corporate culture, "avoidable errors."

A federal Cyber Safety Review Board has issued its report on what led to last summer's capture of hundreds of thousands of emails by Chinese hackers from cloud customers, including federal agencies. It cites "a cascade of security failures at Microsoft" and finds that "Microsoft's security culture was inadequate"...

... "Throughout this review, the board identified a series of Microsoft operational and strategic decisions that collectively points to a corporate culture that deprioritized both enterprise security investments and rigorous risk management,"...

... “Inaccurate public statements” and unsolved mysteries...

... Microsoft has previously offered a version of the intrusion story, one that notably avoids the words "vulnerability," "exploit," or "zero-day."...

... Those kinds of unrevealing, withholding public statements were cited by the CSRB in its finding of Microsoft's failures. The report cites "Microsoft’s decision not to correct, in a timely manner, its inaccurate public statements about this incident, including a corporate statement that Microsoft believed it had determined the likely root cause of the intrusion when in fact, it still has not." It also notes that Microsoft did not update its September 2023 blog post about the invasion cause until March 2024, "as the Board was concluding its review and only after the Board’s repeated questioning about Microsoft’s plans to issue a correction."...

... “Cascade of Microsoft’s avoidable errors”

The CSRB's conclusion is that Microsoft's security culture is "inadequate" and that a "cascade of Microsoft's avoidable errors allowed this intrusion to succeed."...

... "Unfortunately, throughout this review, the Board identified a series of operational and strategic decisions that collectively point to a corporate culture in Microsoft that deprioritized both enterprise security investments and rigorous risk management," the report states. "These decisions resulted in significant costs and harm for Microsoft customers around the world..."

Konnichiwa, Sato-San...

... by the year 2531, everyone in Japan will have the surname Sato.

Not that there's anything wrong with the name Sato, of course. It's currently the most popular surname in Japan with more than 1.5 percent of the population proud to call it their own – slightly ahead of Suzuki.

There are, however, comparatively few surnames in Japan for the size of its population...

... by 2446, over half of the population would be called Sato. And by 2531, everyone would bear the name...

... However, [following present day trends,] the boffin pointed out that the year 3310 prediction was irrelevant – by that year the Japanese population would include only 22 people thanks to its population decline...

... "In other words, even if 100 percent of the Sato surname is postponed for 800 years, there is a high possibility that the Japan itself will be destroyed due to the declining birthrate before that,"...

'Complete digital sovereignty' ... sounds familiar...

... starting its switch from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, and is planning to move from Windows to Linux on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions...

... "LiMux started in 2004 and reached its peak in 2013, before coming to a halt as decisions about its future were made. Linux and LibreOffice have matured significantly since then, with the latter having way more commercial support options, huge Microsoft Office compatibility improvements, and a tabbed user interface to ease transition.

"LiMux faced some technical challenges at first, but by 2017 Karl-Heinz Schneider (the head of IT services) said: 'We are not aware of any large technical problems with LiMux and LibreOffice ... We don't see any urgent technical reasons to return to Windows and Microsoft Office'."

Haven't we heard this before though?...

... While this might not bode well for Schleswig-Holstein, its strategy seems substantially different. Both Munich and Lower Saxony never fully transitioned to Linux, which created the compatibility issues that encouraged both governments to go back to Windows...

... "the reasons for switching to Linux and LibreOffice are different today. Back when LiMux started, it was mostly seen as a way to save money. Now the focus is far more on data protection, privacy and security...

By the end of the 11th century, the period of Islamic Arab territorial expansion had been over for centuries. The Holy Land's remoteness from focus of Islamic power struggles enabled relative peace and prosperity...

• A volcano-type explosion of the launch pad itself;
  
  
• A rain cloud, with added features;
  
  
• And by 'eck, those Apollo moon landings and take-offs were scary fortuitous for the real-moon parameters encountered...!
  

Quite an education!

... And all part of rapid iterative design with fun guaranteed!!

Enjoy!


Keep searchin',
Martin

Conservative fifth circuit overturns EPA’s ban prohibiting Inhance from using manufacturing process creating toxic compound

A federal appeals court in the US has killed a ban on plastic containers contaminated with highly toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” found to leach at alarming levels into food, cosmetics, household cleaners, pesticides and other products across the economy.

Houston-based Inhance manufactures an estimated 200m containers annually with a process that creates, among other chemicals, PFOA, a toxic PFAS compound. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December prohibited Inhance from using the manufacturing process.

But the conservative fifth circuit court of appeals court overturned the ban. The judges did not deny the containers’ health risks, but said the EPA could not regulate ... under the statute it used...

... known as “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and they have been linked to cancer, high cholesterol, liver disease, kidney disease, fetal complications and other serious health problems.

The EPA said in a statement to the Guardian that it was reviewing the decision...

... The decision is the latest salvo in a four-year legal fight over the company’s manufacturing process. Inhance treats containers with fluorinated gas to create a barrier that helps keep products from degrading. A peer-reviewed study in 2011 found Inhance’s containers leached the toxic compounds into their contents...

... Since 2020, Inhance appears to have repeatedly lied to regulators and customers about whether PFAS leached from its containers, and for several years resisted EPA’s demands to submit its process for review...

... the EPA and other companies have found alternatives to treating containers with PFAS...

Millions of eyeballs, but it still gets a commit
Malicious SSH backdoor sneaks into xz, Linux world's data compression library

1: I avoid the use of the unhealthy mess that is Systemd;
2: My system is using the xzlibs 5.4.2;
3: The later releases are disabled, see the following note...

Newer releases were signed by a potentially compromised upstream maintainer. There is no evidence that these releases contain malicious code, but masked out of an abundance of caution. See bug #928134.

Lower Pertwood in Wiltshire... [on] rolling hills south of Salisbury Plain...

... The 2,800-acre arable farm begins its transformation this spring into the biggest grassland rewilding project in southern England, in an attempt to restore declining plants, insects and endangered species including cuckoos, grasshopper warblers and turtle doves...

... latest accounts show the facility has a net book value of £33.2m and 81 employees...

Over the past half decade it seems that the once venerable aviation giant Boeing has fallen into a state of apathy typically reserved for industries in autocratic corrupt regimes. Disaster after disaster has occurred all because a company wanted to save a quick buck. and now...

Airbus has expressed its frustrations with Boeing over persistent issues plaguing the manufacturer. Airbus says these problems affect the broader industry, and a healthier Boeing is better for everyone...

... an unhealthy workplace culture at Sellafield...

... Charges relate to four-year period between 2019 and early 2023...

... the state-owned Cumbrian nuclear company that it would be prosecuted under industry security regulations...

... The site has the largest store of plutonium in the world and is a sprawling rubbish dump for nuclear waste from weapons programmes and decades of atomic power generation.

Other findings in the Guardian’s Nuclear Leaks investigation included concerns about external contractors being able to plug memory sticks into its computer system while unsupervised.

The Guardian also revealed that cyber problems have been known by senior figures at the nuclear site for at least a decade...

... Sellafield’s computer servers were deemed so insecure that the problem was nicknamed Voldemort after the Harry Potter villain, according to a government official familiar with the ONR investigation and IT failings at the site, because it was so sensitive and dangerous...

Drug companies urged to ‘release stranglehold’ on medicines such as Ozempic and Trulicity, as millions are priced out of treatment

Drug companies are pricing diabetes medicines at almost 400 times the level necessary to make a profit, according to a new study.

Researchers said it would also be possible for modern insulin pens, which are safer and offer more accurate doses than vials and syringes, to be used even in low-income countries if pharmaceutical firms “put people before their astronomical profits”...

Concerns that some groups who are more at risk from virus face hefty price tag, as Boots set to charge almost £100 a shot...

... “The most disadvantaged in society are most likely to be exposed to respiratory viruses due to things like poverty, intergenerational households and crowded workplaces. While they might be most in need of a seasonal vaccine, they will also be the least likely to afford £100 in the midst of a cost of living crisis,”...

... workplace vaccination schemes might reduce employee absences which could be valuable to society...

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered Boeing to fix a design flaw on the 737 MAX ... could disable the engine's anti-icing system without the pilots' knowledge...

• Who are they?
  
  
• What is the Prize?
  
  
• Why Boinc for that one?
  

... And there is a bit of faff to sign up and register your email address...

And curiously, their website doesn't explain what this is all about...

What is this all about please?


Keep searchin',
Martin

Government has repeatedly used figure to justify more fossil fuel developments despite climate crisis

Are 200,000 jobs really supported by the oil and gas industry in the North Sea?...

... the most recent Office for National Statistics data suggests 27,600 people are directly employed...

... on how the 200,000 figure was calculated ... the energy minister Graham Stuart said it came from the industry body Offshore Energies UK and referred to direct, indirect and induced jobs supported by the sector. He did not explain how the 200,000 figure was calculated...

... “The government has been defending its dangerous plan to mandate annual oil and gas licences by claiming the sector supports 200,000 British jobs. But that figure comes directly from the industry itself and has not been independently verified. Rather than delivering a much-needed just transition for oil and gas workers, the government is deliberately cherrypicking its data..."

... “Instead of getting across the detail and coming up with a coherent plan, this government has abdicated responsibility for making sure workers and communities aren’t left behind to the market and an industry that prioritises shareholder returns over investment in jobs. What’s urgently needed are politicians prepared to take a clear-eyed look at the sector and where it is headed and who will come up with a plan for delivering a managed and crucially fair transition for workers and communities.”...

Major landmarks, businesses and households in cities around the world turned their lights off for one hour at 8.30pm local time on Saturday 23 March to raise awareness of the climate crisis and show support for renewable energy...

Nearly half of workers experienced clinical stress, findings suggest...

... Nearly half of the 3,700 workers employed by MPs experienced clinical stress similar to emergency service workers last year, the findings suggest.

One in five said they feared for their own and colleagues’ safety...

... The survey found that 46% of staff met the medical threshold for psychological distress – more than twice the level in the general population...

... Nearly half said they frequently or always hid the nature of their work from others because they expected a negative reaction...

... The survey also highlighted anxiety over the looming general election, with more than half saying they felt it would negatively impact their job, and 48% feeling unprepared to seek a new role.

Employees outside Whitehall said they were treated like “slack-jawed yokels” and “second-class citizens” by the parliamentary establishment, often working in unpleasant offices...

... legacy of Covid as it warns that near-record 2.7m people are too ill to work...

... a benefits crackdown is unlikely to solve the country’s jobless crisis...

... too sick to work, with the biggest increase since the Covid pandemic concentrated among the UK’s youngest and oldest workers...

... the impact on young and old adults could have “serious effects both on individuals’ living standards and career paths, as well as wider strains on the NHS and welfare spending if we fail to improve the nation’s health and reduce economic inactivity”...

British producers hope to export technology despite challenges over funding and high energy prices...

... moved firmly past the pilot phase to become a significant supermarket supplier. It supplies 30% of the UK’s cut basil, and can produce 550 tonnes of fresh greens a year...

... without pesticides, and requiring 94% less water...

... “Pesticides, chlorine washing and travelling hundreds of miles all degrade the quality of the leaves,” she says. “We see vertical farming as part of the future of food. What we need is a resilient and robust food system. To create that, we need to be growing the right food in the right place, using the right technology.”...

Are you flying Boeing?

Boeing's been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately. Put in your next flight number and check your fate flight...

1.44 exaFLOPs of FP4, 13.5 TB of HBM3e, 2 miles of NVLink cables, in one liquid cooled unit

... It's an astonishing potential windfall for Mr Trump in exchange for a business whose own auditor warned last year it was at risk of failure.

Never mind the many red flags associated with the deal, including unresolved lawsuits from former business partners. There's also an $18m settlement that Digital World agreed to pay last year to resolve fraud charges...

... Backers of Digital World - the vast majority of whom are individual investors instead of Wall Street firms, many apparently Trump loyalists - seem undaunted...

... Trump Media warns prospective investors that it does not track metrics like user growth or engagement that could give them a sense of its operations. And it says it has little intention of doing so...

... Analysts said Digital World was a prime example of a "meme stock", in which the share price is divorced from a company's fundamentals - and near-destined to fall, eventually...

... individual investors piled into Digital World stock after the Trump deal was announced, and again in January, after he won the Iowa primary.

Ahead of the vote this week, he said there had been less activity, a sign that professional firms might be the ones driving the trading.

Whatever is motivating buyers, Mr Trump, whose main contributions to Trump Media have been his name and posts on the platform, appears poised to be the top beneficiary. "It's an enormous transfer of value from [investors]... to Trump...

... Truth Social “hasn’t really taken off”, Klymochko said. “At this point, it’s a meme stock. It’s really just a betting tool on the probability [ - possibility? - ] of Trump winning the election.”...

Ex-president makes claim on Truth Social while RNC fundraising deal sees donations going to committee paying his legal bills...

... According to preliminary reports and findings, the unexpected plunge of the 787 could have been triggered by a flight attendant inadvertently activating a switch on a cockpit seat.

... both Boeing and Alaska Airlines have filed court documents disavowing liability...

... Others lambast cheap sliced white as unhealthy and unsustainable. How did our most basic foodstuff become a source of conflict and division?

The cheapest loaf in my nearest supermarket costs 45p. The cheapest loaf in my local artisanal bakery costs £5. Which of these facts winds you up?...

... ultra-processing enables supermarkets to sell bread so cheaply...

... how can something that requires only four ingredients – flour, water, yeast and salt – diverge so wildly on price?...

... Technology has since relegated white sliced to the cheapest option ... “After being told for centuries that white bread was too good for the likes of them, it isn’t surprising that easy-to-eat, comforting white bread is what people wanted,”...

... What went so wrong? Let’s start with the flour...

... The manufacturer is not required legally to list the various “processing aids”, usually enzymes, used mainly to increase volume and prolong softness. “Industrial bread is the poster child of ultra-processed food,” says the Real Bread Campaign’s Young. “It’s made using a whole cocktail of additives.” The world’s largest review into ultra-processed food found last month that it is “directly linked to 32 harmful effects to health, including a higher risk of heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, adverse mental health and early death”...

... “the ultra-processing is just one aspect of it. Even if you don’t care about that, according to UK dietary guidance, this bread is high in salt and sugar … At 278 calories per 100g, it has a higher calorie density than a Big Mac. It is also incredibly soft.”

Softness gives bread the illusion of freshness and makes us eat more of it...

... Maybe we can all agree that 45p is no bargain for an ultra-processed product and that £5 for a sourdough loaf prices out most people. “We need a grassroots revolution,”...

Whether Boeing "did it" or not, does anyone truly believe at this point that Boeing wouldn't do it?

Veteran spacecraft shows signs of sanity with poke from engineers...

• Good?
  
  
• Desperate?
  
  
• Or fuel to give the Denialists an excuse to procrastinate yet more years?...
  

All on our only one planet...
Martin

... [Pilot] "I'm at an alert status that I've never had to be in on a Boeing airplane," he says. "Because I don't trust that they've followed the processes that have previously kept me safe on Boeing airplanes for over three decades."...

... in January, when a disused emergency exit door blew off a brand new Boeing 737 Max shortly after take-off ... Boeing is reportedly facing a criminal investigation into the incident itself, as well as legal action from passengers aboard the plane...

... Five years ago Boeing faced one of the biggest scandals in its history, after two brand new 737 Max planes were lost in almost identical accidents that cost 346 lives. The cause was flawed flight control software, details of which it was accused of deliberately concealing...

... Earlier this month the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, said that a six-week audit of the 737 Max production process at Boeing and its supplier Spirit Aerosystems had found "multiple instances where the companies failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements".

The findings came shortly after another report into Boeing's safety culture by an expert panel found a "disconnect" between senior management and regular staff, as well as signs that staff were hesitant about reporting problems for fear of retaliation...

... "The culture at Boeing has been toxic to trust for over a decade now," he says. "You can add safety steps, you can add procedures. But the fundamental issue of distrust makes those changes almost ineffective"...

... further evidence of how production problems could endanger safety emerged this week. The FAA warned that improperly installed wiring bundles on 737 Max planes could become damaged, leading to controls on the wings deploying unexpectedly, and making the aircraft start to roll. If not addressed, it said, this "could result in loss of control of the airplane". Hundreds of planes already in service will have to be checked as a result...

... Whistleblower John Barnett, who was found dead last weekend, had worked at Boeing's factory in South Carolina from 2010 until his retirement in 2017... he had claimed the rush to build planes as quickly as possible in order to maximise profits had led to unsafe practices... Boeing denied his claims. But his untimely death, which occurred between legal hearings in a lawsuit against the company, has focused new attention on them...

... the market needs Boeing to be healthy, and to overcome its current problems quickly. So can that happen?...

... "Boeing, their suppliers, airlines, and government agencies are capable of overcoming these challenges, but the first step in fixing these problems is being honest," he says

"They need to admit these problems exist and stop trying to spin the truth. The more they spin, the longer it takes to solve the problems and the greater the risk."...

... OMG! See Juan Browne's latest Latam update. Cockpit meal may well be the cause!

Do they have the CVR?

blancolirio - LATAM Flt 800 UPDATE! Seat Issue?! 14 March 2024

... Boeing has recommended that airlines inspect cockpit chairs of 787 jets for loose covers on switches, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported that unnamed US industry officials said the incident was the result of a mishap: a flight attendant serving a meal hit a switch on the pilot’s seat, pushing the pilot into the controls.

In a memo issued late on Thursday, seen by the newspaper, Boeing said that closing a spring-loaded seat back switch guard on to a loose rocker switch cap could “potentially jam the rocker switch, resulting in unintended seat movement”.

Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It is already grappling with a safety crisis...

... CVR and FDR are overwritten...

“My concerns are with the 737 and 787, because those programs have really embraced the theory that quality is overhead and non-value-added, so those two programs have really put a strong effort into removing quality from the process.”

• "Streamlining the operation... Reducing costs and raising production..."
  
  
• 'Don't want to hear about a metal tube flying at 800mph with loose bolts...'
  
  
• GPS directed/controlled automated landings?... (Especially anywhere near Russia, Kaliningrad, Iran, ...?)
  

Superficially reassuring?

Are you happy to play the Boeing numbers game?

Rather than enjoying a healthy culture and methodology of safety first?


Fly safe?
Martin

... suffered injuries on March 11 after a “technical problem” caused a “strong movement”...

... One person is in a serious condition while the rest had suffered mild-to-moderate injuries...

... What’s surprising is what reportedly caused this incident...

... Here’s the really strange part of this story. Everything about this sounds like what you’d expect in a situation where a flight encounters severe turbulence. However, that’s reportedly not what happened. An airline spokesperson has said that the sudden movement of the aircraft was caused by a “technical problem.”

Furthermore, a passenger reports speaking to one of the pilots onboard, who relayed to him that “my gauges just blanked out, I lost all of my ability to fly the plane.” Now, I’d be hesitant to trust one random passenger’s account of what the pilot said, but the airline has confirmed the incident happened due to a technical problem, rather than turbulence, so...

"With respect to documentation, if the door plug removal was undocumented there would be no documentation to share. We will continue to cooperate fully and transparently with the NTSB's investigation."

With quality control under ever-increasing scrutiny, the idea that the removal of the door plug might have gone undocumented is almost unthinkable. We spoke to an aviation industry insider who said that even the suggestion that the removal might have been undocumented was "bizarre."

BMA [British Medical Association] guidance on staff responsibility levels follows death of woman whose fatal blood clot was missed twice...

... MAPs [medical associate professions] “are working in roles that increasingly cross the line into situations more appropriately requiring the expertise of a doctor”, and the BMA’s guide set out what it “considers a safe scope of practice that will keep patients protected and allow the NHS to effectively employ MAPs to assist medical teams – which was their original purpose”.

He said he hoped the report would lay out “clear parameters for the distinction between doctors and MAPs” and put an end to the “creeping substitution of PAs for doctors on rotas”.

A BMA poll of more than 18,100 UK doctors found that more than half (55%) had faced a higher workload since PAs and AAs had been brought in. Only 21% of medics who responded to the survey reported a decreased workload...

... We don't have ships of the Desert here, not living ones at least.

... There is 1 remaining issue with Linux & if I can get that resolved, it's bye bye Microsoft. I've even begun to get used to Open Office as my legitmate copy of Office 2010 will not install on Win 10/11.

... I wouldn't call these Mentour guy's videos "clickbait scare". He has a talent to explain things in detail and with good visualizations for any layman. You could read hours of NTSB reports and still not understand a thing. He deserves the money for his 'clickbait'.

The Maximus guy is tiring for non-natives; a strange pronunciation he has... or an accent, a dialect... laziness to move lips... hmmm...

... I'm sure it is psychology and nothing else.

I think that rates as beyond extreme!

In a few years he will gradually transform into a monster fly. I've seen a documentary recently where ... or was it a horror movie? I don't remember anymore...

Former civil service boss Mark Sedwill blames constant rotation of personnel and lack of proper teaching for poorer strategic thinking

Prime ministers should send their cabinet members to a school of government...

... effective government needed “longevity of personnel”, rather than a stream of new ministers without expertise...

... many top ministers not having any expertise in their area when they start the job...

... “Political skills are critically important for a minister but they aren’t the only skills a really effective minister needs. They also need governance skills. But those things don’t arise naturally. You have to teach them. “We don’t really train ministers at all, but to be frank, if you really want them to be strategic, you need to give them time to be strategic.”...

German man, who said he had vaccines for ‘private reasons’, suspected of selling certificates to people who didn’t want jab

A German man who voluntarily received 217 coronavirus jabs over 29 months showed “no signs” of having been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 and had not suffered from any vaccine-related side effects...

... the man’s vaccine spree had sparked a criminal investigation against him for suspected fraud, after suspicions he had run a scam to sell the vaccine certificates to people who did not want to get the jab...

... reports confirmed the criminal investigation against the man, who was accused of getting so many doses in order to be able to collect the stamped and signed vaccination cards, which could then be forged and sold on to people who did not want to be vaccinated...

... The academics contacted the man after reading about him in a newspaper report. He accepted their request to study his body’s response to the multiple jabs...

... They vaccinated him for the 217th time for the purpose of the study, the researchers said. The research team said it had seen official confirmation for 134 of the vaccinations, which included eight different vaccines, including various mRNA vaccines...

... “The observation that no noticeable side effects were triggered in spite of this extraordinary hypervaccination indicates that the drugs have a good degree of tolerability,”...

... The researchers found that his immune system was fully functional...